Shan Shan Noodles

Great place for noodles! Tried items that got good reviews on Unilocal.The pork soup dumplings were as good as expected. Good scallion pancake but the steamed spare ribs were so-​so and I wouldn’t order them again. My wife had the pulled noodles with duck and the broth was a bit bland. On the other hand I had the Hand Pulled Noodles with spicy minced pork and the broth was excellent. Great service and we were greeted as we entered by the very friendly owner.

Yum!
I love hand-​pulled noodles so when this place popped up as a suggestion on Unilocal,I had to give it a try.
We went for dinner on a Friday night and it was pretty packed but we managed to get a table. The staff are incredibly friendly and nice and accommodating. We loved the complimentary dish of pickled cucumbers.
We shared a few dishes, including the spicy celery, scallion pancake, Chinese burgers, the hand-​pulled noodle soup with beef, sticky rice-​coated spare ribs, and pork xiao long bao. Everything was really good. I especially enjoyed the celery and the hand-​pulled noodle soup.
On a second visit, we tried the spicy knife noodles, which were so good and they were actually spicy.
I plan on going back more often, as the noodles are so good. New Year carb-​watching be damned! I want noodles!
Overall, the food here is great, albeit a bit salty for my taste. But hey, I can just compensate by chugging some water.

This place is the best regional Chinese restaurant in the area. Please stop telling your friends to go there, it’s getting hard to get a table. If you do end up there, the spicy shredded pork pulled noodles are out of this world.

Great spot for really authentic northwestern Chinese food. None of that General Tso’s crap! Favorites we tried: scallion pancakes, fried pork buns, and spicy shredded pork noodles. The staff & owner, Lily, is so friendly. We went at an off peak time (Sunday afternoon) and heard there had been lines all weekend due to the NYTimes article. Highly recommend!

Great stuff. Watch the noodles being made while you eat! Family owned and operated. The owners are so nice and made my family and friends feel very comfortable. We were so well fed too. This is some great authentic chinese food. Not that greasy take out you find in every little town in America. What an experience. The owner even brought a little noodle dough for my son and some other kids to play with.

I agree with my Unilocal elite friend (Chris L.)‘s review.
I ate here once with my family and we noticed that the broth had no seasoning. I still would come back to try the Xiao long boa and or a quick meal.

Authentic. Fresh. Delicious.
A friend turned me on to this place and I finally made it. I completely dislike american style Chinese food. The type that is covered in sauce and loaded with garbage. Shan shan is a discrete oasis of real deal Chinese.

This place is great! The food is delicious and the service is phenomenal. We had our one year old with us and they wait staff brought out an extra bowl and scissors so that we could cut the noodles and dumpling to give our daughter.
The noodles are delicious and the dumplings are to die for. Check in using the Unilocal app and you also get a free bubble tea!
I can’t wait to go back!

Updating review.
My die-​hard home made noodle enjoying husband (from northern china wheat flour carb snob) is making Shan Shan is weekly weekend jaunt for Sunday lunch. The whole family carb loads and then takes a nice nap. Brought my parents here, had beef soup noodles, stir fried seafood noodles, some apps, and the shredded pork with tofu. They really liked the stir fried noodles-​had a great texture (chewiness).
My kids love watching «mr.noodle guy» pull the noodles in record time (30 – 45 seconds per noodle item). He remembers my kids and waves to them.
The owners are incredibly nice and warm as well, making sure that they meet every patron.

So glad this little gem opened up next to the Chinese grocery store I shop at. When they first opened up I was skeptical given that we are in the middle of surburbia NJ but to my surprise and delight, this place is legit. All the noodles are homemade and handpulled– you can see the chef making the noodles which is great fun for the little kids to watch! You can choose from different types of noodles to go with whatever noodle soup you choose — «knife sliced», wide noodles, thin noodles. The broth is legit and not made with MSG. Also the dumplings here are amazing. It’s all homemade and they also sell them as frozen packs if you want to cook them at home.
Store owner and staff are super warm and friendly. Needless to say, I am a super fan!

We stumbled onto this place by accident while on route to another! Although their front entrance, and location seemed to be a bit of a deterrent, I was pleasantly surprised of how delicious and home-​made their dishes tasted! We had been looking for a good Chinese restaurant near home and I think we have finally found one!
I can’t wait to revisit this place. Can’t wait to try what other tasty dishes they have!!!

First time here yesterday with friends. We all love their Chinese bums and hand made noodles. And their service is pretty good, will come back again and again.

I thought customer was always right. There’s an evident language barrier, but how much would it really take to get the order we wanted.
So annoyed. Soup and fried noodles? How much would it cost to keep customers happy?
They didn’t ask us if we wanted any water, nor tea. Did not check on us to see if everything was alright, nor if the food was okay.
And they threw away half of our left overs.
This has been an experience.
Very unhappy (regular) customer.

Glad I could find a place like this while I was on the road. I love this type of food. I had the house special hand-​pulled noodle soup, which came in a clear broth with some greens and LOTS of tripe, and a marinated hard-​cooked egg. The noodles had good texture and flavor. The lady running the place was VERY nice.
They don’t take credit cards for orders under $ 15, FYI.

Soup dumplings are good. The hand-​pulled noodles are a nice touch. You can even see their guy making them through the window. The wontons in my soup were pretty tasty but the broth was a bit bland for my taste. It tasted pretty light and was reminiscent of phở broth.
For the price and the portion size, it’s definitely worthwhile to come check it out. This place is pretty good for what it is and wouldn’t mind coming back and try other dishes.
3.5÷5.0

I had two soup noodle dishes here, the spicy pork with peppers and the beef tendon noodle soup.
The spicy pork noodle soup was actually good. Noodles had a good texture and the taste was flavorful.
The beef noodle soup wasn’t very good in my opinion. It seemed to me the broth was mostly flavored by soy sauce. The beef slices were actually still cold (from the fridge) in my soup.
The chef was making home made hand pulled noodles in the restaurant, which is a plus.
I’ll be back to try again.

So the noodles are good. Really good. But you know what isn’t? Everything else. The broth was completely bland. It needed serious amounts of soy sauce and chili oil to make the soup portion good. It honestly would have been better in a bowl of regular old Top Ramen broth. The seaweed salad needed a ton of vinegar to make it tasty. The buns and dumplings were pretty over cooked. It was also pretty annoying to get service. They forgot one of the bowls of noodles because they gave it to someone else as well.
I’d only come back if I could just get some noodles to go and nothing else. That way I could make my own soup and add the tasty noodles.

Chinese-​style phở prepared with freshly hand-​pulled noodles & served amazingly quickly by fantastically friendly people, worth a visit for a simple meal. As much tendon, tripe and pig ear as you’d like but I challenge you to finish a noodle bowl without slurping plenty onto your shirt lol, I sure couldn’t manage it!
Love the sesame-​soy cucumbers that hit your table when you sit down, yum. The scallion pancake app is a steal at $ 2.50, recommend. Soup dumplings (steamed pork bun) are very good, you don’t have to trek all the way to Flushing, Queens, and just $ 6.50. My huge bowl of spicy pork & noodles was rich with cilantro and spice oil, ground pork and plenty of those noodles, about $ 9. And yes, of course I watched the man pull the noodles fresh for my dinner.
The lady boss of the house explained basically every item on the menu to us when we sat down, nice welcome for newcomers. Shan-​Shan is housed in an exceedingly plain strip mall, maybe a dozen tables and, well, don’t come here expecting ambiance; think of a word that rhymes with «five.»
Vegetarian rating: 3 stars for the veggie & noodle options, both soups and stir-​fries, but I confess I didn’t ask if the soup broth is pure veg. Also: seaweed and bean sprout salads, steamed vegetarian dumplings, plain pulled noodles in hot oil.
Didn’t find out much about the Chinese burger, maybe next time.

Omg where do I start…
I don’t know much about authentic Chinese cuisine but if this is it… I will expect the same or better from other Chinese restaurant…
For starters, my husband was starving and he almost literally order everything on the appetizers menu. He order spare ribs (delicious not the greasy questionable kind of meat that u get from the corner Chinese restaurant), the pork buns (again they are like dumplings but wayyyyy better, it literally is like a dumpling but has pork and soup in the middle inside the dumpling, amazing eh?) The dough is thin again nothing like the Chinese restaurant I grew up on, this is the real deal, and we also order the Chinese burgers omg all of the flavors were delightful I think I could live off those burgers even the bun was homemade…
For our entrees we order the soups sooo scrumptious…
But the best part of the meal was the service I could attest to saying that I’ve been to multiple restaurants where the service has been mediocre to great but I honestly felt at home (and I’m not Asian) the owners and the waitress went completely out of their way to greet us, attend to us, to make us understand their food and culture I honestly really appreciated it… The cutest part of everything was that when my husband and I left the owner ran out as we were walking towards our car to thank us for going to their restaurants when we were the ones that needed it to thank her for the great food and service… That’s how a business stays open…
P. s. don’t forget to get some bubble tea :)

Hand Pulled Noodle Goodness
Food:
The pork soup dumplings were the star of the meal. The first bite leads to a burst of flavor since the pork is drowning in broth. Don’t make the same mistake I did and bite into it as soon as it arrived. It arrives burning hot!
After a bad experience with Chinese styled soup (hand-​pulled noodles) in the past, I was wary about ordering one. It was good. The broth had flavor, the vegetables didn’t overpower the dish and the beef was plentiful. It isn’t the best soup dish you will find, but it does give you a great bang for your buck.
I don’t think you can go wrong with any item on the menu.
The cucumber side dish they provided our table with before ordering was finished amazingly fast. Even though I didn’t try any, my two fellow diners agreed it was the second best dish in the restaurant (behind the pork soup dumplings).
The tea was a bit weird.
Service:
There is a language barrier. The service is friendly, but it was rather difficult to communicate with the gentleman taking our order. His knowledge of the menu was lacking. Our orders came out correctly and quickly.
Overall: 4 Stars
I have had bad experiences with Chinese hand-​pulled noodle soup restaurants in the past, but Shan-​Shan shows how it good it can be when it’s done properly.
The broth has flavor, the vegetables don’t overpower the soup.
The portions in terms of the price are amazing and the quality remains solid.
If you are looking for an inexpensive lunch/​dinner I highly recommend visiting Shan-​Shan, you will not regret it.